The University of Florida Health Science Center - the most comprehensive academic health center in the Southeast - is dedicated to high-quality programs of education, research, patient care and public service.

The UF College of Dentistry is the only public-funded dental school in Florida and is recognized as one of the top U.S. dental schools for the quality of its educational programs, oral health research enterprise and commitment to patient care and service.

The College of Medicine, the largest of six colleges at the University of Florida Health Science Center, opened in 1956 with a mission to increase Florida's supply of highly qualified physicians, provide advanced health-care services to Florida residents and foster discovery in health research.

Founded in 1956, the University of Florida College of Nursing is the premier educational institution for nursing in the state of Florida and is ranked in the top 10 percent of all nursing graduate programs nationwide. The UF College of Nursing continually attracts and retains the highest caliber of nursing students and faculty with a passion for science and caring.

Established in 1923, the College of Pharmacy is the oldest college in the UF Health Science Center. Ranked among the top schools of pharmacy nationally, the college supports research, service and educational programs enhanced with online technologies.

The UF College of Veterinary Medicine is Florida's only veterinary college and provides many unique educational programs for students and services aimed at helping pets, wildlife and endangered species. We offer a a four-year Doctor of Veterinary Medicine programs as well as M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Veterinary Medical Sciences.

Co-located with the Shands Jacksonville Hospital, the Jacksonville Health Science Center excels in education, research and patient care that expresses our abiding values of compassion, excellence, professionalism and innovation. Our state-of-the-art medical center serves an urban population of 1 million from north Florida to south Georgia.

The UFCOM-J offers accredited graduate medical education residency and fellowship programs, in addition to non-standard fellowship programs. Clinical rotations in all the major disciplines are provided for UFCOM undergraduate medical students and elective rotations to students from other accredited schools.

The UFHSC-J is a clinical teaching site for the Gainesville-based College of Nursing. Students rotate through the various clinical settings on the campus, and primary care centers and specialty care centers located throughout Jacksonville.

The UF College of Pharmacy-Jacksonville offers a four-year Doctor of Pharmacy (Pharm.D.) Program completed entirely in Jacksonville. Also offered on campus is an American Society of Health-System Pharmacists-accredited pharmacy residency program at Shands Jacksonville.

University of Florida Health knows how important ongoing medical learning is to health care providers and the community. That is why we provide online Continuing Medical Education (CME) courses for you to complete for CME credits. These courses share the latest in medical knowledge, teach new patient-relationship skills and help providers deal with relevant current issues.

Atkinson receives national diabetes award

University of Florida diabetes researcher Mark Atkinson, Ph.D., has been given the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation's highest honor, the David Rumbough Award.

The annual award, established in 1974 by actress Dina Merrill in honor of her late son, David, acknowledges outstanding achievement and commitment to diabetes research and service to the foundation.

Atkinson is the Sebastian Family/American Diabetes Association professor for diabetes research at the College of Medicine and directs the Center for Immunology and Transplantation and the JDRF Gene Therapy Center for the Prevention of Diabetes and Its Complications at UF and the University of Miami.

He is an internationally recognized authority on type 1 diabetes, with particular interests in disease prediction and prevention, the role of environment in initiation of the disease, stem cells and pancreatic regeneration, and the use of gene therapy as a means to cure the disease and prevent its complications.

Atkinson was among the first to show that administering insulin to mice genetically destined to develop diabetes could thwart the errant immune system's battle to destroy insulin-producing cells in the pancreas. His published findings helped pave the way for the massive National Institutes of Health Diabetes Prevention Trial, which tested the approach in people.

He also was one of the earliest investigators of glutamic acid decarboxylase, or GAD, an enzyme generated by the insulin-producing islet cells of the pancreas. Patients with type 1 diabetes often develop autoantibodies to GAD as the immune system turns against the body's islet cells. Atkinson then helped develop a standardized way to use the presence of these GAD autoantibodies to predict diabetes.

About the Author

Melanie Fridl Ross

Chief communications officer for UF Health. She also serves as senior producer and managing editor for the public radio program Health in a Heartbeat, overseeing operations for the nationally aired... Read More